


Snow at Allerdale

by the_transparent_wolf



Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Snow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-08
Updated: 2016-03-08
Packaged: 2018-05-25 11:41:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6193780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_transparent_wolf/pseuds/the_transparent_wolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They were two children who, slipping in the darkness, found each other's hands and never let go for fear and companionship.</p>
<p>What if Lucille hadn't died when Edith struck her?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snow at Allerdale

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is always welcome, be it a comment, critique, or flame. It's how I can improve!
> 
> Edit 21/10/16: minor grammar and style edits.

Snow at Allerdale is rarely pristine. It sugarcoats the streaks of red clay snaking through the white ground. The manor looks like a crooked haphazardly made ginger bread house from afar, sinking into a red fudge foundation, dusted with icing sugar and green candy ferns around, if you like. When the night carried a blizzard to Allerdale, the servants used to bolt down the shutters before they retired, frost webbing, feet aching, and by daybreak everything is a perfect white. White. White. White. Then inevitably by mid-morning the warmth will have dissipated the fog unfurling low across the ground. Crimson will have peeked through.

The air is white with snow now.

Frost had glued Lucille’s eyelashes in translucent spikes. Snow dust gathered in the crown of her head, eyebrows, the upward sweep of her eyelashes. Her cheeks had long lost its rosiness; her long neck and chest and arms were nearly one colour with the background. But her corneas were not yet clouded. 

Her chest was still rising and falling. 

The blood was still warm in her.

Thomas stooped down to touch her hair. Lucille used to stroke Thomas’s curls like that, gently and with great affection, when his warmth and his weight reassured her of her own existence—that she was living, breathing, feeling, and had not faded to the void of non-existence. Gone was the cherub golden boy. …He was gazing at her with eyes brimming with tears. She remembered how he used to cry when Mother—

“Hush,” he murmured. Grey smoke and the last vestige of him bleeding away at the edges. “You must move, Lucille. You will die out here. Go back to the house.”

Lucille’s eyes prickled at the sight of him, even though any tear she shed would be frozen on the corner of her eye.

“Come now, Lucille.”

He touched her neck—or tried to. Lucile's lips moved.

His eyes focused on her like she was the only thing in the world. He looked but an impression of his former self. The cheekbones that were once sharp and defined were blurred (how she’d mourned his loss of baby fat); the dark curls carefully brushed away from his forehead were loosened; but the mouth, straight and thin and determined and sincere, remained the same. She traced the trail of blood from jaw to the wound beneath his left eye. The tender tendons of her heart twisted, and she half-closed her eyes to savour the acetic aftertaste of regret.

The crease deepened between Thomas’s brows. “Don’t—”

_Don’t leave, Lucile._

_Don’t weep._

_Don't scream._

_Don’t be silent._

The common vine threading through their earliest memories conjoined them heart-lungs-pelvis. It would take surgery to remove it from their system. It would be painful. Agonising, ( _don’t you know_ ), and brutalising. She’d thought they would survive. 

Who knew it could be broken by a girl-child barely out of braids?

Love. And luck. And bad timing.

Thomas tried for another tone, “Who will bury me if not you?”

If she died here, would her soul be tied forever to Allerdale? It was comforting thought, in its way. 

“You don’t want to die here,” continued Thomas. “Mother’s here as well.”

No longer comforting a thought.

Thomas brightened at her expression. “Exactly, you’ll be able to see her now. I suppose she was always there, glowering at us, but _now…_ it’ll be like taking a house with her.”

Lucille curled her fingers into a fist, and began to crawl.

“Wait, where are you— _head back to the house._ Stop. Lucille! You’ll bleed to death if you don’t die of hypothermia. Don't go.”

For the first time in her life, Lucille turned away from her brother’s pleas.

The snow beneath her melted through her dressing robe, the silk georgette and chiffon of her night gown trailed after her like the train of a moth. Winter at Allerdale had never felt so harsh. Coldness seeped through her flesh and muscle and exhaled icy breath in her bones. She could feel her body shivering, in a distant detached way. Her fingers were long numb, and she registered her existence only through the impressions she made on the snow. Thomas drifted after her with agitation in his terse mouth and restless hands. Several times he tried putting his hands on her waist or shoulder and every time he passed through her body. 

Reach. Pull. Drag. Repeat.

“Please stop.

“I love you. Please stop. I love you.”

Lucile's movement stuttered. Were it possible for a ghost to pale, Thomas did when he saw her expression. His wide-set, deep blue eyes looked terribly young and uncertain. Edith had once remarked that Thomas and Lucille had the same eyes. Inherited from their father, Lucille had told her. It was one of many traits that they shared.

“I never thought you would lie to me, Thomas.”

“I’ve never lied to you.”

“You did. For Edith.”

“I’m not lying.”

Resting her forehead on her forearm, Lucille wondered whether she was far away enough from the house to not be bound to it when her soul left her body. She would take eternal damnation over her mother any day. The Devil sounded practical from what she'd read and Hell didn't come with personal baggage.

“I love you both,” said Thomas.

“You loved Edith more.”

“You were killing her.”

“You knew what would happen if you brought her home.”

“Home,” repeated Thomas. He stared at Lucille with an odd expression. Her brother’s expression had become harder and harder to read ever since Edith entered their world. 

“Yes,” said Lucille. “Home.”

The snowstorm had waned. Sunlight shone through parting clouds and draped the hills with pale gold light. For as far as the eye can see, the snow stretching beyond the iron gates of Allerdale Hall was carpeted in red, orange, violet, and turquoise dots of light. Pale puffs of breath engulfed pale crevices of her features. Lucille’s eyes were fixed on the rainbows fracked by the ice crystals. Eventually Thomas settled down beside her.

His long hands stretched near her, as though he wished to sense her body heat, and together they stayed, ignoring the wet glistening red spreading under Lucille. Thomas stayed with her until the sun was resplendent in the sky, and Lucille’s eyelids ceased to tremble, and her last breath had been spent.

 

 

 


End file.
